Rotary engines with pistons pivotally mounted on a rotating rotor have been in the engine art for some time. See, for example, the U.S. patent to G. E. Hanley, U.S. Pat. No. 1,048,308 and the patent to H. D. Anderson, U.S. Pat. No. 1,400,255. Through the years following, other U.S. patents were issued on improvements and changes to the original rotary concept, the most notable of which was the patent to Felix Wankel, U.S. Pat. No. 2,988,065. Other, less notorious patents on the subject, have issued, including U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,373,723 to D. N. Blosser; 3,438,358; 3,793,998 to M. Yokoi et al; and 3,855,977 to F. D. Statkus.
The most pertinent prior art from the standpoint of the present invention however is the U.S. Patent to Emil Georg Schubert, U.S. Pat. No. 3,789,809. Schubert describes an engine generally similar to the one of the present invention in the disclosure for which he recognizes the advantage of twice compressing the air to be used with the fuel. During only a single downstroke of the pivotal piston, Schubert compresses air beneath the piston and then ducts it to the upper surface of the piston through a channeling system built into the forward end of the recess which houses the piston. One problem with this ducting system for the compressed air is that only a portion of the air compressed below the piston can find its way into the space above the piston during the single stroke of the piston and, accordingly, the engine is only partially supercharged, unlike the present invention. One of the most important distinctions between the engine of Schubert's disclosure and the present invention is the fact that Schubert draws a fuel-air mixture into the space above the piston prior to supplementing the mixture with the compressed air drawn through the channel from below the piston and prior to ignition. This method severely limits the compression ratios which are potentially achievable with an engine of this kind. High compression of a fuel air mixture prior to the programmed time for ignition will cause undesirable pre-ignition and backfiring.
Accordingly, it is the primary object of the present invention to provide a rotary engine which is capable of achieving high compression ratios without the probability of pre-combustion and backfiring.
A second object of the invention is to provide an internal combustion engine where the combustion pressure is exhausted from the combustion chamber, allowing the next injection of fuel to be made into a volume of low pressure, prior to the arrival of the highly compressed air above the piston.
In connection with the preceding object, another object of the invention is to provide a combustion chamber having a shape and disposition relative to the engine housing in which resides an apparent rich fuel-air mixture, pending the arrival of the highly compressed air over the oncoming piston. The result of this objective is to produce an extremely powerful explosion.
Another object of the invention is to provide means, as described in the previous objective, for controlling the richness of the fuel-air mixture by controlling the amount of fuel which is injected into the combustion chamber.
Still another object of the invention is to provide a novel combustion chamber configuration for rotary internal combustion engines which will magnify the tangential force component of the engine, thus producing greater torque and power output from the engine.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a rotary engine having exceptionally good characteristics for purging exhaust gases from the engine.
A still further object of the invention is to provide an engine mechanism which is clean burning and emits the minimum of unburned particulants.
Other objects of the invention will be apparent from a reading of the specification and description of the various embodiments of the invention.